The Catch

by Archer Mayor

  Later, as they were about to leave, Delaney asked Joe to linger for a short, private conversation.

  “Vicious bastard,” he said quietly as Joe shut the office door.

  Joe settled back into the chair he’d been using earlier. “Steve?” he asked in surprise.

  His host laughed. “Hardly. I like him—glad to see he’s turning things around. I meant Beale.”

  “I thought you barely knew him.”

  Delaney frowned. “No. I was a little less than candid there—didn’t want to say too much.”

  “Sure,” Joe reassured him, well used to how cops tended toward discretion, as he often did himself. “Has he been acting up lately?”

  “Not specifically, although rumors are his fortunes have improved—which tweaks my interest. Also, he pounded the snot out of one of my informants a couple of years back, he has a history of assault and battery, and—more to the point—we can confirm he knew Roz because he once tried to organize a weird kind of labor movement against him on the part of all the suppliers.”

  “You’re kidding,” Joe exclaimed. “Like a strike?”

  “Beale said people like himself—mules, importers, shipment facilitators, or whatever you want to call them—were getting the shit end of the stick while running the biggest risks. He had a point, even if it wasn’t late breaking news.

  “He didn’t get anywhere, surprise, surprise,” Delaney went on. “Didn’t stand a chance from the start, since the people he spoke for couldn’t have cared less. I think he was basically pissed off and tried to legitimize it, at least in his own eyes. The point is that he threatened Roz in the process, got mauled by the bodyguard, Harold, and was frozen out of ever doing business with Roz again. I’d forgotten all about that, since it dates back.”

  Joe shook his head. “Steve made Beale sound like everyone’s favorite uncle.”

  Delaney’s eyes widened. “Oh, he can be a charmer. Don’t get me wrong. That’s one of the secrets of his success. I’m sure as many people think he loved Roz as know he hated him.”

  Joe furrowed his brows. “You think Beale might’ve killed him?”

  Delaney shrugged. “It’s worth looking into. I’ll shoot a memo to the state police and tell them to check him for that. We probably ought to take a squint at him, too, now that everything’s in an uproar. Be a perfect time for him to make a play.” He paused and added, “I would say that Steve got lucky never dealing with him. Do me a favor, will you? Take note if Steve mentions anything else about the guy. Could be he remembers something he didn’t tell me.”

  That didn’t happen. Wellman Beale was never brought up again, except in passing as they revisited the Jonesport pier. Otherwise, they drove along the coast, hitting harbor after harbor—Deer Isle, Bar Harbor, South Addison, Machias, and more—finally reminiscing less about Steve’s solo travels and more about their shared family outings. The trip, however, remained valuable, if for reasons unconnected to Joe’s initial thinking. When they parted ways the following day, all three of them felt richer for the companionship, and certainly, Joe and Lyn had moved a little farther toward something deeper. Joe’s failure, therefore, to gain much new information mattered little to him. Indeed, he could now admit that the entire scheme had probably been more about wanting some time with Lyn. That he’d gotten to know and appreciate her brother was a bonus he hadn’t expected.

  Things were different the following day, however, after Lyn and Steve had left, and Joe was back among the task force. Once more in Delaney’s office, they were all told that the case had finally gotten a break.

  “Bernie?” Cathy Lawless virtually crowed. “The man of mystery? Turns out he’s named Ann DiBernardo.”

  “A woman?” someone reacted.

  “Don’t you love it?” she asked. “I give credit where it’s due—our own Dave Beaubien came up with this one.”

  “Attaboy, Dave,” said Michael Coven, the MDEA director, who happened to be in the area.

  Dave, his back against the wall, merely nodded.

  “Do we know about DiBernardo?” asked Dede Miller, of the ICE team.

  “Portland PD does,” Lawless answered. “They’ve had her under surveillance now and then, brought her in for questioning several times, and generally would love to have the taxpayers pay for her room and board. But they’ve never been able to pin anything on her.”

  “What’s her angle?” Miller asked.

  “Crooked finances,” Lawless said. “Mostly drug-related. Dave discovered a minor rap sheet dating back to a misspent youth—well, misspent twenties, at least. She’s mentioned in connection with a business fraud case, about ten years old; and she’s a person-of-interest in an embezzlement, same vintage. After that, she’s been all but invisible, except through inference and innuendo—the ultimate person-of-interest.”

  “And she lives in Portland?” Lester Spinney asked.

  “Yup—a city girl.”

  “Why would Bob and Grega be talking about her?” he pressed, recalling what Jill Zachary had told him.

  “No clue,” Cathy said.

  “Which is probably why we should sit on her around the clock for a while,” Joe suggested. “She being the hottest lead we’ve got, for both my homicide and your drug case.”

  Delaney spoke what immediately leaped to every local cop’s mind at that—he pointed at Chapman and asked, “Lenny? The federal government’s writing the checks here. None of us is going to cover that kind of expense.”

  Chapman sighed slightly and asked rhetorically, “We’ve had no sightings of Grega anywhere, right?”

  “Nope,” Cathy confirmed.

  “If it helps,” Mike Coven said quietly, using his senior officer status to clinch the deal, “you might end up killing two birds with one stone, like Joe said. On top of that, since Bernie’s news to us and seems involved in the drug business, you’d be doing MDEA a huge favor as well by funding an operation we could never justify on our own.”

  “And credit would be paid publicly where it was due,” Joe added.

  Lenny smiled and shook his head. “You guys sure know how to say all the right things, don’t you? Okay. I’ll run it by my handlers. I’ll also run her through our computers and have a chat with the Portland PD. No promises, but keep your fingers crossed.”

  Luis Grega waited for a full hour before making his move. He’d mentally rehearsed how he wanted this to go, and now that the time had come, he wanted to make sure everything went perfectly. It was a game he played with himself, especially when the stakes were high—balancing the adrenaline of such situations with disciplined cold-bloodedness. He’d seen too many people lose control just when they shouldn’t—whether they were responsible for what was about to happen or simply the victims.

  He’d played both roles in his life—the latter only when he’d been weak and young. That was why he was always the aggressor now. He would never be on the short end again, no matter the cost.

  He eased himself out of the guest bedroom closet, the hinges of which he’d oiled earlier in preparation, and stepped soundlessly across the room in his sneakered feet, acutely attuned to the house’s every sound.

  He stood in the hallway for a few minutes, enjoying the power of being the only one awake. He’d done this sometimes in prison, slipping out of his bunk and merely standing at the bars, comparing his wakeful vigilance to so much surrounding unconscious vulnerability.

  He walked slowly, gracefully, remembering from his practice runs which boards creaked. He passed the bathroom, still smelling of her shower and the cheap perfumed soap she used, to the half open door of her bedroom.

  This he pushed open gently, again confident of its silenced hinges, before slipping across the threshold like a ghost and positioning himself with his back against the wall.

  Eight feet from him was the foot of the double bed—a beaten-up wooden monster, held together in two places with nailed-on lathing. The room, dimly glowing from the moon outside and the nightlight in the distant bathroom, was
a depository of dropped clothes, discarded toys, strewn magazines, and unpaid bills. A mess, in other words, like its inhabitants—or what was left of them.

  She lay on her side, facing him. One bare leg had already worked its way out from under the single sheet, and the T-shirt she wore as a nightgown had ridden partway up her stomach, revealing her underwear. Her long dark hair partially covered her face.

  He watched her breathing, studying the movement of her breasts under the thin cotton, enjoying this moment to the point of not wanting it to end.

  Except, of course, that it would have to.

  Smoothly, conscious of how he’d look were he being filmed, Grega took several strides to the side of the bed, pulled the sheet back with a flourish, and laid the flat of his hand at the base of Jill Zachary’s throat, effectively holding her down.

  Her eyes popped open and he waited for her to scream, ready to shut off the noise with a violent squeeze. Not that it really mattered, of course. They were alone in the house, Bob being dead and their son a ward of the state. But it was the principle of the thing, and Grega didn’t like loud noises.

  But she didn’t make a sound. She did straighten abruptly, however, sliding up a few inches on the pillow, and pulled the hem of her T-shirt down as far as it would go.

  Only then did she whisper in a voice shaking with terror, “What do you want?”

  He sat on the edge of the bed, his hip pressed against hers, which she moved away ever so slightly, as if hoping he wouldn’t notice.

  He took the time to add to her discomfort by studying the length of her body, slowly cataloguing every detail. Her hands tightened on the bottom of her shirt as his gaze reached the top of her thighs. But he didn’t stop there and made no gesture to heighten her fear.

  At last, he returned to her face and smiled. “You don’t like me, do you?” he asked softly.

  A nervous twitch at the corner of her mouth suggested a failed attempt to smile politely. “I don’t know you.”

  “That’s my point. But I saw it on your face when I was here with Bob.”

  “All his friends make me nervous.”

  He laughed, reached up, and tapped her cheek with his open hand. She winced as if being struck.

  “You are a liar, Jill.”

  “I’m sorry” was all she could say.

  “I’m used to it,” he admitted philosophically. “All of us spics learn the look you give us, even as little kids. It never changes. Except,” he added, placing his hand where it had been, but a little lower, so that it rested between her breasts, “for times like these. You don’t dislike me now, do you?”

  “I fear you.”

  He raised his eyebrows, impressed. “Very good. Nice answer. You should.”

  She took advantage of his reaction to risk repeating, “What do you want?”

  His hand slid farther down, to just above her navel. He could feel her trying to control her breathing. “For now?” he answered. “I just want to talk.”

  In the long silence that followed, she was forced to ask, “What about?”

  “What you told the police, Jill.”

  “Nothing,” she blurted out instinctively and then sucked in air as he suddenly pushed down with his palm, grinding into the pit of her stomach. In pain, she grabbed his wrist with both hands, writhing to get away.

  He eased up slowly, cautioning, “Settle down, settle down.”

  She did so, resting her hands by her sides, as if at attention, and struggling to catch her breath.

  “Good,” he rewarded her. “Want to try that again?”

  “I did talk to them,” she admitted plaintively, tears now in her eyes. “They took my kid away, and killed Bob.”

  “What did you say about me?”

  “They asked,” she said, her eyes widening, as if presenting a gift to an ever-critical elder. “But what could I tell them? That you were there. That Bob brought you home. You didn’t say anything in front of me, so I had nothing to tell them. That’s what I meant.”

  Grega pushed out his lower lip thoughtfully and nodded slightly.

  “But, here’s the problem, Jill,” he finally said. “I have a real good memory—places, people, faces.”

  He leaned toward her, simultaneously slipping his hand up under her shirt, which again made her start.

  He ignored her reaction as he added, “And especially conversations. I’m like a tape recorder.” He got even closer, almost face-to-face. “And I remember you walking in on us, asking if we wanted dinner. Does that ring a bell?”

  She nodded silently, her head pushed back deeply into the pillow behind her.

  “Tell me, Jill. Tell me what you remember, too.”

  “Bernie,” she let out, almost in a gasp.

  He smiled and straightened slightly. “Cool. What about Bernie?”

  “Just the name, and that Bob got real mad at me after, for walking in when I did. I told the cop that’s why it stuck in my head.”

  “And they found that interesting?”

  “I don’t know,” she said with a touch of anger. “The cop didn’t seem to know him, either, if that helps.”

  Grega’s expression changed slightly. Jill noticed something a little like relief there, if only momentarily.

  “He said ‘him,’ when he talked about Bernie?”

  “Yeah. ‘You ever see him?’ ‘You know who he might be?’—stuff like that. Why does that matter?”

  He moved his hand off her bare stomach and worked it around to her side, sliding it up near her armpit, beside her breast. She began wondering if the dangerous part was over—if all that might be left was the sex she knew he’d force on her, and for which she began to brace herself.

  “What else did he ask?”

  “That was about it. He wasn’t real pushy. He was nice—said he wasn’t really with the others, whatever that meant.”

  Grega stopped stroking her rib cage and pinched her skin slightly. “Jill,” he warned her, “I don’t want to hear, ‘That was about it,’ and then nothing else. What was the rest?”

  She shifted away from his hand and he let go of the fold of skin he’d been kneading. “It was nothing. He asked if you’d ever been in Vermont.”

  He was aware of the intensity in her eyes. She was fearful of what she was revealing. He slid closer to her on the bed and finally put his hand full on her breast, pressing it hard against her chest.

  His voice was cold when he asked, “You know this is going to end one of two ways, right?”

  She just stared at him.

  “Answer me.”

  She nodded.

  “You tell me what he really wanted to know, and all you’ll have are nice memories, even if it’s with a greaser—or whatever you call us.”

  Again, she didn’t respond.

  “But, you play dumb,” he continued, “and I will cut you up.”

  He left it at that, letting her imagination do the rest.

  “He said you shot a cop in Vermont—that it was a federal case, and that a lot of people were after you.”

  His reaction caught her totally off guard. He pulled his hand out from under her T-shirt and sat bolt upright, staring at her.

  “Those fucking assholes,” he burst out, all snaky lasciviousness gone. “I didn’t shoot the son of a bitch. Are they still stuck on that? That’s what he said? Word for word?”

  Once more, she pulled her shirt down as far as it would go. “Yeah. He made it really clear.”

  Luis Grega got to his feet and paced up and down a couple of times, kicking piles of clothes out of the way in the process.

  “Jesus H. Christ,” he said. “That is so fucking full of shit. Dumb bastards should’ve figured that out by now. Lazy pricks.” He thumped his chest. “I thought I was the one who was gonna get it next.”

  He stopped abruptly and stared at her. “So the cop who grilled you was from Vermont?”

  “I don’t know. He didn’t say.”

  He ran his hand through his hair and shook
his head. “Fuck me,” he muttered. “Why can’t they get it straight?” He then bent forward at the waist and asked, “Did he say who he was, at least?”

  She nodded, now totally unsure of what to expect. “Gunther,” she said softly. “It was the same name as a doctor I used to have.”

  That seemed to satisfy him. He absorbed the name, muttered, “Well, Mr. Gunther and I’re going to have to meet, ’cause he’s full of crap,” and then he was gone.

  Stunned, Jill listened to his footsteps retreating down the hall, heard him take the stairs two at a time and slam the front door on his way out.

  For a moment, she continued lying there, still clutching the hem of her shirt, and then she curled up into a ball and began crying from the pit of her stomach.

  CHAPTER 23

  Spinney and Gunther knocked on the door and waited. They were in the darkened hallway of an old apartment building in Portland, Maine, on Fore Street, in the town’s historic port section. The place had probably once been a warehouse, but unlike most of the old, brick-clad, industrial-age buildings back in Brattleboro, this one and its brethren up and down the street had been carefully and expensively overhauled. Portland was benefiting from a renaissance of sorts, and monied interests had discovered it as they had never discovered Brattleboro.

  The door opened to reveal silent Dave Beaubien, who simply nodded his greeting. Lester, the extrovert, was having none of that.

  “Hey, Dave. How’s it going?”

  But Dave merely stared at him and shook his head sorrowfully.

  “That’s good, Dave,” Lester laughed, conceding temporarily. “You’re an eloquent man, in your way.”

  Joe had already proceeded farther into the borrowed apartment, which belonged to the absentee owner of one of the street’s ubiquitous upscale restaurants. Beyond the foyer and down a dimly lit, short hallway lined with expensive black-and-white photographs, he came to a living room, only half visible by the streetlights outside, that was stuffed with antique furniture, thick Persian rugs, overly dramatic wall decorations, and a small clutter of cops, gathered around a tripod-mounted digital movie camera aimed out of the room’s central window.